-- President Francois
Mitterand speaking to a colleague in confidence about Rwanda
(1)

On
October 10, 2002, my daughter Noelle's birthday, I caught Ralph Nader on
the campus of the University of Utah. I was passing through the so-called
Great Salt Lake area, and serendipity favored me.

Senator
Bob Graham had just delivered his Floor Statement on the Iraq Resolution:
"...tonight I have to vote no on this resolution. The reason is that this
resolution is too timid. It is too limited. It is too weak. This
resolution fails to recognize the new reality of the era of terrorism."
And immediately before entering the Utes' main lecture hall, it was
announced on the radio that the U.S. had acknowledged "carrying out a
sweeping Cold War-era test program of chemical and germ warfare agents in
Britain and North America." But those soundbites didn't hold my
attention long. On that tenth day in October, my friend Bobby Brown --
the furthest thing from Whitney Houston's druggie/companion -- finally
succumbed to the ravages he had been subjected to in Kitale Camp, Goma,
Zaire. He had witnessed the 90s genocide in Rwanda first-hand, and like so
many who walked that African walk he had paid the price.

Running
into Ralph was a true high, as his subject for the evening was "Citizen
Activism." It helped to be reminded that we never describe ourselves as
citizens when asked who we are, and to have the fact that "what we do does
count" underscored with that special Nader flair and credibility. It
guaranteed that I'd never not "vote my conscience" again.*

*Don't get
me wrong; I've never voted for any Gore or any Bush.

There were
only two points in Ralph's presentation at Kingsbury Hall that night which
bothered me. One came during the Q&A when someone in the audience asked
him to recommend a website. I can't remember all of what he included, but
I do recall him omitting
www.counterpunch.org
and www.zmag.org,
and praising
www.commondreams.org. These days that's a Black Mark in my book.
With the stakes as high as they are, I think we can do without the
Middle-of-the-Road Sanctuary that is that CD site, home to way too many
ABBers. In fact, such was always the case. It's also home to the UN Fan
Club, documenting the various rationales for supporting that institution's
forays overseas, along with much undeserved applause for its restraint
abroad. Which brings me back to Bobby and the other Nader/Nadir Black
Mark, Ralph's stance vis-ŕ-vis our role in Rwanda/the UN's
mandate regarding interventions in "such situations."

A much
bigger blackhead, I'm afraid, one that calls for pressing, not squeezing.

When
pressed shortly before the Q&A kicked in at Kingsbury Hall, RN confirmed
that he was all for the U.S./UN --someone-- intervening when "one group of
people decides to bash in the heads of another group simply because
they're from another group." It's a Black View on several counts.

According
to Robin Philpot's "Judge
Bruguiere's Report on the Assassination of former Rwandan President
Habyarimana", the upcoming tenth anniversary of the
Rwandan abominations brings us a 225-page report making it clear that the
missile which brought down both Burundi's President Cyprien Ntaryamira and
Rwanda's Habyarimna was the handiwork of Rwanda's current corrupt head of
state, Paul Kagame. It also delineates the complicity of President
Clinton, Uganda and Ugandan President Yoweri
Museveni, the UN's Kofi Annan, the UN's mission commander general Romeo
Dellaire, the UN's Human Rights Commission head Louise Arbour and many
others...in the genocide that followed, the coverup that ensued and/or
other serious, related matters. At one point, former UN Secretary General
Boutros-Ghali, on French television, had actually declared that "the
Rwandan Genocide was 100 percent American responsibility."

However,
Michael Barnett's Eyewitness to a Genocide: The United Nations and
Rwanda -- unlike Samantha Power's A Problem From Hell: America and
the Age of Genocide -- makes it clear that Boutros-Ghali must also own
to being responsible for aspects of the Rwandan tragedy. Powers, by the
way, is an excellent example of the kind of coverage one can expect from
the Common Dreams site when truly controversial issues are at stake; some
of her contortions of logic are absolutely Helleresque, Anthony Lake-like
at the least. But all of CD's periodic tap dances around the collective
culpability of the UN and America -- beating the "can" versus "ought"
aspects of intervention to death underfoot -- prevent us from preventing
the next holocaust. That's the word that Lord Bertrand Russell used, by
the way. (2)

As Bobby
noted so long ago, in an effort to protect their own financial health,
indeed their very survival, the UN and various NGOs have had to
differentiate between this and that humanitarian cry. This may be
necessary from time to time, of course, for various reasons. However, in
the case of Rwanda, simply calling atrocities by their proper name would
have compelled the UN to act differently, more appropriately, more
humanely. That they refused to do --although they knew better-- and the
U.S. assisted them in the holocaust. The UN and the U.S. set it up so
that they could democratize blame, absolving themselves of any significant
amount of guilt in the process. They spread the guilt around to such a
degree that no one could really be blamed. Alain Destexhe, the
secretary-general of Doctors Without Borders, addressed it all most
poignantly, perhaps, when he described "the guilt of the perpetrators" as
being "diluted in the general misery." (3)

In short,
only the Ahistorical Amnesiacs of America and their relatives can vouch
for the UN at this juncture. Certainly, Ralph Nader, like Dennis Kucinich
and Al Sharpton, has been much too ready to hand over the world's victims
to irresponsible forces.

And Ralph
betrayed something else in his make-up that evening on the stage.
Although the Rwandan slaughter should have been properly labeled as
"genocide" early in the post-assassination period, Radio Rwanda made it
very clear that ethnicity was not the main issue prior to that.
(4) Ralph was too quick to be too general about the
justification for U.S. humanitarian intervention, reminding me of other
such stances of his in the past. And he was a bit too cavalier in
dismissing a good point made from the audience respecting how starvation
and war -- two elements which the U.S., the UN and others could have
easily helped to avert prior to the outbreak of genocide -- were
responsible for the Rwandan hostilities in the early 90s.

More to
the point, as Michael Barnett has documented in the source cited above, it
wasn't until May 4, 1994 that the word "genocide" fell from the lips of
Boutrous-Gali on a Koppel Nightline show, letting the public know
what the Security Council knew for a full week; no one in that rarefied
realm believed that mere ethnic conflict was taking place on the African
continent at that time. In fact, it is highly likely that France, for
one, gave protection and weapons to those who had already been accused of
genocide before the greatest number of atrocities took place.
(5)

When one
considers that Melchior Ndadaye, Burundi's president (murdered in October,
1993) was one of three Hutu presidents to be assassinated within
six months in the region, it's clear that once the Ugandan missile brought
down Habyarimana and Ntaryamira, both the U.S. and the UN had plenty of
motivation to prevent what was obviously going to ensue. But no, we had
looked the other way for years with many despicable Africans on our
payroll, just as we do today with Rwanda's maniacal President Paul Kagame
(95% of the vote in the last "honest" election!). Humanitarianism has
nothing to do with our interventions abroad, and can't, as things are
presently structured. I assume that Ralph knows that, and I hope he'll
express a truer picture on these points in the future.

Mark my
words: If Ralph were to come out with a more severe position regarding
our foreign "indiscretions" -- including, say, an even stronger stance
vis-a-vis Israel and Africa -- he'd pull in 5% more on election day;
Kucinich's biggest mistake was not going far enough. That's what much
of the non-voting public requires to start thinking, and to get off the
sofa; one can't motivate the masses with David Rieff dreams/realities.
(6) Dennis went very far relative to the others, and
then stopped dead. Left in the Land of Lesser Evils.

In fact,
what we really need is to refrain from pulling punches politically a
la John Pilger, who has actually pleaded for us all to call for a
U.S. military defeat in Iraq. If anything less than that occurs,
we're headed for the predictions laid out by Tom Engelhardt (March 14,
ZNet) in "After November?: Four More Years of Camp Bush?," which would
include the militarization of space, a sure-fire basis for an unfitting
planetary coda for our so-called civilization. The sad, sad fact is that
The Pentagon, even if it doesn't receive exemption from having to comply
with toxic and other anti-pollution laws --and restrains
itself from invading sovereign nations--, will doom our species and many
others, without question. The EPA has concluded that their former
sites have already contaminated "a land area the size of the state of
Florida." (7)

We're not
talking about a small plug of sebum here.

Regardless, whereas Bush and Kerry are both festooned with black pustules,
Ralph's blemishes can be seen in a palatable light. In fact, I hope my
daughter and anyone else involved with electoral politics will be working
hard to secure an advantage for Mr. Nader come next fall. Bobby would be
doing so, if he weren't in the Land of No Evils. And I think he would
greatly appreciate your spreading the word respecting Robin Philpot's
article and/or Judge Bruguiere's report.

(1) William Pfaff, "An
Active French Role in the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda," International
Herald Tribune, January 17, 1998.
(2) Linda Melvern, A People Betrayed: The Role of the West in Rwanda's
Genocide (New York: Zed Books, 2000), p. 17.
(3) Carol Off, The Lion, the Fox, and the Eagle: A Story of Generals and
Justice in Rwanda and Yugoslavia (Toronto: Random House Canada, 2001) p.
81.
(4) James Gasana, "Remember Rwanda?" in World Watch
(September/October, 2002, Volume 15, Number 5), p. 28; p.30 shows
that acts of Inkuba and Abakombozi violence occurred primarily where
lowest income and lowest daily food energy intake coincided.
(5) See both Gerard Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide,
2nd ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999) and Human Rights
Watch, "Rearming with Impunity," HRW Arms Project, vol. 7, no. 4,
May, 1995. Other sources upon request at
mail@onedancesummit.org.
(6) David Rieff, A Bed For The Night: Humanitarianism in Crisis
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002).
(7) An Interview with Jeff Ruch, "Public Employees for the Environment:
Defending Principle During the Polluters' Ball" in Multinational
Monitor (December, 2003), p. 24.